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March 15, 2009

Fall into the Underland in “Gregor the Overlander”

When Gregor’s little sister Boots disappears into a hole in their laundry room, a simple morning of doing laundry turns into an unbelievable adventure. Gregor follows his sister deep underground and comes across giant cockroaches that take them into a beautiful city. They soon find that the people who live in there, the Underlanders, will not allow them to go home. After a disastrous escape attempt, Gregor learns about a vague prophecy and finds himself on a quest to locate his missing father. If Gregor is not successful in his mission it will not only mean the end of his father, but possibly the end of the Underlanders as well.

Even though I ended up really liking this book, I had a little bit of trouble getting into it. Overall I thought the book was really great, but for some reason the first 50 pages or so were kind of blah. I’m not sure if part of it has to do with the fact that I spend 8 hours a day listening to children whine and complain, but the character Boots was just annoying me. For the first 100 pages I just wished she didn’t exists. However, once Gregor’s quest began and I read more about the Underland I totally loved the book and had trouble putting it down. I loved the relationships that the bats had with the Underlanders and how there were these class structures based on whether you were bat, cockroach, spider, or rat. I really don’t want to give anything away because there are a lot of wonderful aspects to this book, but I really enjoyed discovering the mysteries of the Underland with Gregor. Collins did a great job making this fantasy world come to life. By the end of the book I really felt connected with all the characters and actually found Boots to be cute! I was pretty bummed out that book had to end; however, there are four other books to the series! I will definitely read more of the series and I’m glad I stuck through the first 50 pages